Lot Essay
The pose of satyress in the present drawing is inspired by the antique statue of Hermaphrodite, F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven, 1981, no. 48, fig. 120. The statue was discovered near the Baths of Diocletian not long before 1620, and was bought by Cardinal Scipio Borghese.
Formely attributed to Clodion, the style of the drawing is by an earlier hand influenced by the school of Vouet. The type of the putto is often found in works associated with the artist, B. Brejon de Lavergnée, Inventaire général des dessins, école française, Dessins de Simon Vouet, Paris, 1987, no. 32, 193, CXII, illustrated. The technique, however, is somewhat freer than the usually very precise style current amongst Vouet's followers. The drawing was probably made by a French artist working in Rome around the middle of the 17th Century.
The evidently Italian watermark is of the coat-of-arms of a cardinal which is very reminiscent of the unidentified coat-of-arms of a bishop engraved by Agostino Carracci, D. De Grazia Bohlin, Prints and related Drawings by the Carracci Family, Washington, 1979, no. 201, illustrated
Formely attributed to Clodion, the style of the drawing is by an earlier hand influenced by the school of Vouet. The type of the putto is often found in works associated with the artist, B. Brejon de Lavergnée, Inventaire général des dessins, école française, Dessins de Simon Vouet, Paris, 1987, no. 32, 193, CXII, illustrated. The technique, however, is somewhat freer than the usually very precise style current amongst Vouet's followers. The drawing was probably made by a French artist working in Rome around the middle of the 17th Century.
The evidently Italian watermark is of the coat-of-arms of a cardinal which is very reminiscent of the unidentified coat-of-arms of a bishop engraved by Agostino Carracci, D. De Grazia Bohlin, Prints and related Drawings by the Carracci Family, Washington, 1979, no. 201, illustrated